Category Archives: Celebrity

We had veered off the TransCanada highway ages ago, deciding instead to follow the backroads that lined the providence – a network of ragged capillaries that spread out and fed the small places that dotted the landscape.

(There’s more of them than you’d think, these places; places such as these.)

Places that could not rightly be said to compare to the big places elsewhere, but which offered a break from the monotony of the road, nonetheless.

Places whose existence by the wayside remained contingent on their ability to attract the curious, the eager and the weary, and to capture their attention for just long enough, for that crucial moment, or two.

Places whose particular claim to fame included tours of forsaken industry (mines, factories, mills), offerings of historic (or historical) points of interest (a fort, a trading post, the birthplace of some local notable, fictional or otherwise), and (my favourite) roadside attractions toting otherworldly monuments invoking hometown character or charm, standing resolutely in place and steadfastly against time. The quirky, the bizarre, the aberrant, unabashed, on full display, for all the world to see:

SEE!The World’s Largest Dinosaur in Drumheller. Purportedly the largest. I never verified (it’s not the kind of thing you verify). A nominal fee lets you climb the staircase embedded in this T-Rex’s fiberglass flesh so that you can peer out of her open mouth at people standing not all that far below (you can then, like Pinto, wave to them). Erected in 2000, she stands 25 meters tall and can fit up to 12 people in her mouth at a time.

EXPERIENCE! The (slightly deranged) whimsy of the stuffed and mounted rodents at Torrington’s World Famous Gopher Hole Museum. The critters are plentiful, and are outfitted in cute little costumes as they engage in various hometown activities, like going to church, frequenting the local pool hall, or street brawling with animal rights activists. Admission also just a nominal fee away (two dollars, but that’s 2009 pricing). Established 1996.

Witness! See! Experience! Between work, between school, between the responsibilities and expectations of everyday life, between us, we had all the time in the world to explore these places; places such as these where MJ had manifestly refused to materialize.

Now, though.

I found myself quietly singing along here and there as the pavement rolled on under the rusting carriage of Terry’s ancient Corolla, and there was nothing much else to do but stare up, into that enormous Alberta sky, out there, at clouds as big mountain ranges and a blue so intense it made you feel somehow flattered, and somewhat ashamed.

Stephen woke up with a start, then drifted off to sleep again. He kept doing that, never fully waking, not entirely sleeping. It got to be unnerving. “More MJ?” he asked. “Still MJ?” he breathed, then dozed.

Mae pulled back from the window and tilted her head towards the radio.

Terry drove.

No. Nothing much else to do at all but surrender to the vastness ahead and MJ’s omnipresence within, hovering over us, god-like, and with such measured indifference for all his omnipotence that always seemed to me prerequisite to being one amongst the gods.

The songs flowed, one after another as Terry flipped blithely from station to station, managing somehow to prompt no apparent break in the music, failing to rouse a voice from the ether to break the spell and confirm or deny what it was (whatever it was) that was happening.

The whole world has to answer right now, just to tell you once again,

Don’t want to see no blood, don’t be a macho man,

Cause we danced on the floor in the round,

Inside a killer thriller tonight,

A crescendo, Annie.

Celebrity, unleashed! MJ in all his glory, in all his incarnations, from Off The Wall (1979), to Bad (1987), to Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995), and on to Invincible (2001).

Thriller (1982).

We should have known.

But since we were drifting anyway, and with no particular destination in mind as the towns blurred together and it became difficult to know for certain which name belonged to which place, which attraction meant what, and to whom, it was, admittedly, kind of nice to have something familiar along for the ride.

We found the Birds of Prey Sanctuary more than we discovered it. Just east of Lethbridge, off Highway #3. Established 1982.

The clerks inside the gift shop were friendly and politely curious. Attentive in the way that clerks are when the arrival of patrons means a long-awaited reprieve from the dusting of pristine shelves and the wiping down of spotless countertops.

“Where you from?” one of them asked.

Terry and Mae and Stephen answered easily. “Ottawa,” they said. “Thunder Bay.” I hesitated, and then answered “Toronto” and then we watched as the clerks’ faces changed accordingly, as if something had fallen into place for them. I suppose they took that as their right. I guess, anyway, that it was at least their prerogative. This is such a big country.

It was by now late afternoon.

Did they not know about MJ?

“Toronto, eh?”

***

We stopped at a place not too far from the sanctuary for dinner. It was famous for its Italian-Canadian fare (that’s what the guy at the gas station said), but it was particularly prized for its gigantic pizza bread: great slabs of hot dough, the rough size and heft of a decorative pillow, leaden with shredded, multicoloured cheese and finished off with a spray of light green parsley not at all unlike the trimmings fired from the backend of a lawnmower.

(The description above, I assure you, does not do justice to the taste).

We settled in, ushered to a booth by an unnamed hostess. Someone looked up.

And there he was again.

Only this time a vision dancing in perfect synchronization with his sister, Janet, in the legendary Scream video, two figures effortlessly swaying, pop-locking and pivoting in zero gravity on a screen affixed to an unassuming corner of the dining room, close (but not too close) to the bathrooms.

“Look!”

The Incomparable Jacksons. The Immaculate MJ. Just east of Lethbridge, off Highway #3.

“Here too!” exclaimed Terry, pointing, eyes no longer heavy-lidded.

Our server, a man with a shining forehead, thick arms and little patience, may have heard the urgency in Terry’s voice. We were, if memory serves, agog. Certainly, I was and Stephen too.

“Don’t you know?” barked the server, snapping us to attention. “You don’t know?” he added more gently when he realized he had it. “He died. Michael Jackson’s dead.” He eventually left us with our food, carefully arranging it before us on the heavy, water-stained table.

“Died?” echoed Mae. “Dead?” she said, tasting the words.

Despite everything, given everything he had been and done and had become, MJ had never done that, never been that before.

It shouldn’t have been possible: Michael Jackson was dead.

Pinto MacBean, however, remained.

Remains.

Annie are you okay? Will you tell us that you’re okay?

It should not have been possible: something of the permanence of life as we knew it had shifted under our feet and left us stumbling for purchase. As sudden as it was, therefore, absurd. It was more than enough.

It was time to go home.

Time to head back and, if possible, redeem ourselves.

“I’ll drive,” Terry said finally, attempting a laugh around a mouthful of bread.

Summer 2009. A road trip through southern Alberta had taken us across the badlands, past the mushroom-capped hoodoos in Drumheller, in rough tandem alongside the undulating trail of the Milk River, and on to Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park.

Our direction now, vaguely north. Back to the Calgary, toward where this whole thing began, then home again.

It had been a long time since anyone had spoken. After days spent wandering the park, after days, in fact, of traipsing through the various nooks and crannies of the province, we were dirty and tired and severely dehydrated.

I remember Terry’s bloodshot eyes as he drove on, the only one of us who knew how to drive stick and, therefore, the only one of us to do all of the driving (he resents it still). I remember Mae’s feet sticking idly out the open window, her shoes long abandoned somewhere inside the car, and I remember Stephen slouched over in the front passenger seat, snoring gently despite the hour, the rumbling of the Toyota a kind of lullaby in the afternoon haze.

Terry fiddled with the radio as he drove; mentioned something about how it was the only thing keeping him (and, therefore, us) alive at the moment.

And I remember, in strange succession, on radio stations whose frequencies seemed more like obscure mathematical formulations than simple identifiers (101.1 CIXF, 93.3 CJBZ, 90.0 CBRA), came all the classics: Bad (1987), Beat It (1983), Billie Jean (1982).

Thriller (1982).

And (my favourite), Smooth Criminal (1987).

Annie are you okay? So, Annie are you okay? Are you okay Annie?

Then came a few lesser known works, interludes between the real, genuine hits: Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin (1983), In the Closet (1992), You Rock My World (2001). Underrated, perhaps, in their day (or maybe just unremarkable).

Yet, they remained undeniable.

“Why is he following us today?” Mae said this, feet still out the window, toes lightly kissed by the sun. She asked this more than once, as the kilometers ticked by:

“Why now?”

“Why here?”

“Why MJ?”

There was an unease in her voice that spoke to our mixed feelings towards Michael Jackson – the one and only King of Pop, the man who revolutionized music and dance and fashion as we knew it – whose status as a cultural icon remained undisputed, yet marred by garish speculation of his (apparent) eccentricities (his health, his features, his monkey) and unproven (and hence all the more lurid) talk of his dark predilections.

A tarnished idol; a fallen star.

(But an idol, a star, nonetheless.)

The fame, the scandal, the infamy: he made for a formidable apparition. That he had become our unsolicited chaperone, just as we found ourselves at a loss at what to do and where to go, made this impression of him (made him?) all the more uncanny.

1) I dreamt that I failed my Crime and Politics final presentation. I wanted my grade, but the professor refused to give it to me so I dropped out of university instead and began to walk to earth.

2) I dreamt I was at Niagara Falls. I wasn’t doing anything – just watching the falls from the edge of the cliffs surrounding the falls. I don’t know if I was on the U.S. or Canadian side.

3) I dreamt I was standing in a snow-covered field at the base of a hill. People came to me with their paperwork and, one by one, I helped them fill out their forms. Then they went up a wooden staircase to the top of the hill, and I never saw them again.

4) An unscrupulous laboratory switches my brain with someone else’s. This someone is a ring-tailed lemur. I can think and understand the people around me, but I can’t talk, can’t communicate with them. Two women break me out of the lab. We take refuge in the world-renowned Simpsons Museum, which is also a maze. It has purple walls and is filled with giant fibre-glass Homer heads. There are MC Escher stairways everywhere: above and through the maze. Then the museum opens to the public and is flooded by tourists. I perch on the wall and watched them run around the maze.

5) I am stationed at a post-apocalyptic compound. It’s nighttime and I’m standing behind a fence. There are many other people with me, and some of them have lit torches. I am trying to save someone, but have no idea who it is. There is a group of men gathered around a coffin. The coffin is empty. It is also pure white. Suddenly, one of the men turns around so that I can see his face. It’s Ash from Army of Darkness (not Bruce Campbell)…only he’s dressed in a sailor outfit that Bruce Campbell wore in McHale’s Navy. Also, his face is bloated and discoloured because he is a zombie. Ash shouts, but does not make a sound. The men try to hook the coffin to a pulley so they can hoist it up a hill, the top of which is full of vampires. They are in a desperate hurry, as if something very terrible is about to happen. I have no idea how one white coffin is supposed to destroy an army of vampires, and neither does Ash.

6) Freddie Mercury is missing and my team is responsible for finding him. But we aren’t cops or special forces or investigators or anything: just grad students. In fact, a few of the people on my team are people from my MA program. The search focusses on the water: Freddie is down there somewhere. I dive in and wait for a very long time. It is so dark and so blue and above me swims a massive school of fish. Massive fish. They remind me of those Amazonian fish from the Vancouver Aquarium. There fish are there with a purpose: to keep me underwater. I am so afraid. Freddie appears. He has long, scraggly hair but he is Freddie Mercury all the same. When I look up again at the fish trying, I suppose, to think of a way out, it occurs to me that Freddie and I have been tied together. We wait. Despite the threat of the fish, because we are together we don’t feel like we have to leave, to get to safety, right away. It’s eerily silent; there’s a palpable calm, down there in the deep. I notice then that I’m not wearing any diving equipment, and neither is Freddie. We wait. Then, on some signal I can’t see or hear but feel, someone pulls us up, up, up out of the blue – past the darkness, pass the fish and right onto an underground surface. Freddie and I are separated by my team leader, a man who looks very much John Travolta. I report back to the office: a maze of secret chambers and dirt tunnels. I see one of my team members: she is putting away books and filing paper work at her desk. I’m searching for something (my next assignment…Freddie?) and become frantic. I turn around and I’m in a fancy hotel lobby. There’s a confused couple there. Tourists. The man is wearing a colourful Hawaiian shirt and a pith helmet. The woman is a blank. I help them check to their room before checking in myself. But I am at the wrong hotel and I know it.

1. William Lyon Mackenzie King (not to be confused with William Lyon Mackenzie), Canada’s 10th Prime Minister, had three dogs named Pat. Not at the same time: he had one dog (named Pat), the dog (Pat) died, and then he got another dog and named it Pat. He did this three times: Pat I, Pat II, Pat III.

Three Kings.

Rumour had it that Mackenzie King had at least one of the Pats stuffed and mounted after its death, but this is untrue. The rumour, however, is so close to what appears to be the truth that it is often repeated as if true. A difference that makes no difference.

Three Irish Terriers. Three dogs named Pat. No taxidermy involved whatsoever. Séances to commune with the dead, however, were involved, including Mackenzie King’s desire to speak with Pat (the dead one) as well as the likes of his long-dead mother and Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s 7th Prime Minister.

Three Coton de Tulears. One dog (Samantha), two clones of dog (Miss Scarlet, Miss Violet), another a cousin or some such relation (Miss Fanny).

Actually, four dogs were cloned from the first, Samantha. The runt of the litter died, the other clones – not Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet – were given away (five dogs, according to Streisand, would have been too much to handle and Miss Fanny was there to stay). Cloning costs a lot, it certainly does, but Streisand certainly has it.

***

3. Lisa Simpson’s first cat, Snowball, was hit by a car (a Chrysler driven by the mayor’s druken brother, Clovis). She named her second cat Snowball II. When Snowball II was hit by a car (in this case, Dr. Hibbert’s SUV) and killed, Lisa adopted a new cat, Snowball III, who promptly drowned in a fish tank, and led her to get another cat, Coltrane, who jumped out a window and died. Springfield’s Crazy Cat Lady (Dr. Eleanor Abernathy) eventually threw a cat at Lisa, who decided to keep it. She also decided to name it Snowball II to save money on a new collar and cat dish.

Five cats, four named Snowball.

Now. We know that Snowball II (the first one, a black cat) did not look like Snowball I (a white cat, although he sometimes appears as if grey), and that Snowball III did not look like Snowball I or either of the Snowballs II – was, in fact, an entirely different (looking) cat (brown/orange with medium rather than short hair). We also know that Snowball II (the second one) looks identical to Snowball II (the first one).

Coltrane should have been Snowball IV (at least, he could have been), but wasn’t.

Snowball II (the second one) is and is not Snowball IV, which is and is not Snowball II (the first one).

Lisa once tried to resurrect Snowball I via the dark arts. It didn’t work: instead, she and her brother, Bart, ended up unleashing a veritable army of undead upon Springfield, including the likes of Zombie George Washington, Zombie Einstein and Zombie Shakespeare. Too bad. It should have worked.

Try, and try again.

***

To Conclude:

An Irish Terrier, a Coton de Tulear and a shorthair Cat walk into a bar.

“Give us the usual,” they say.

“You don’t have to tell me,” says the bartender. “You’ve been around here before. But are you sure just the usual this time?”

The Irish Terrier looks away, the Coton de Tulear cocks its head, the Cat narrows its eyes but does not blink.

In the month of November our Crack-Smoking Mayor has denied smoking crack, admitted to smoking crack (possibly during one of his “drunken stupors”), lost his radio show (hosted with his doppelganger brother), gained and lost a television show (also hosted with his brother and cancelled after one rant-soaked episode), admitted to drinking and driving, got himself uninvited to Toronto’s annual Christmas parade, and knocked over a fellow councilmember during a meeting when he thought he saw his brother under attack during a near-mêlée they incited on the council floor (by insulting and video taping and otherwise intimating public spectators), and in which he mocked another councilor, who was caught drinking and driving by police, by miming (that councilor?) drinking and driving and crashing his car.

There are allegations of prostitution at City Hall. Allegations of sexual harassment. Allegations of public intoxication. A video of a crazed and babbling Ford making apparent death threats toward an invisible enemy.

There is a photo of public urination.

Referring allegations made in a police document that he made lewd comments to a former staff member (yes, he’s being investigated by police), Ford said during a press conference that:

“It says I wanted to eat her pussy and I have never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married and I’ve got more than enough to eat at home.”

That’s a quote. Emphasis added.

The investigation, by the way, is on-going.

He lost his most of his powers as Mayor during that meeting. He also referred to himself as “Kuwait”.

Yet.

Rob Ford is still a political force, is still popular, is still (reduced powers notwithstanding) the mayor (crack smoking notwithstanding) of the Great City of Toronto.

The Great City that is Toronto.

Theories abound as to the question, almost heartbreaking, of why.

Why?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Why, why, why?

Rick Mercer – Canada’s answer, after a fashion, to America’s John Stewart and, to an even lesser fashion, America’s Stephen Colbert – is right to the point: forget about Rob Ford and look at the politics.

Mercer, ever astute, exorcizes Rob Ford, the man – Rob Ford, the mayor even – for the distraction that he is.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

But Rob Ford, I believe, is a symptom – our collective blurred vision, a shared dizziness, an engorged cyst – of something else, and not just pragmatism born of increasing frustration with existing political systems.

Something in the ether that is not about unfulfilled dreams or about broken promises, but about a kind evolving political consciousness.

That Thing we call Democracy.

What the hell?

The rule of the many over the few? 50% + 1? The words freedom and justice and opportunity come up again and again.

On these, David Foster Wallace makes a compelling argument when speaking about John McCain’s simple promise during the 2008 primaries not to lie to voters:

“Well, it’s obvious why. When McCain says it, the people are cheering for him not so much as for how good it feels to believe him. They’re cheering the loosening of a wired sort of knot in the electoral tummy. McCain’s resume and candor, in other words, promise not empathy with voters’ pain but relief from it. Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. We learn this at like age four… And we keep learning for years, from hard experience, that getting lied to sucks – that it diminishes you, denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world” (2006: 188 – 189).

It hurts.

Then there’s the shame, social and acceptable. Trendy.

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

“GET OUT THE VOTE.”

“Vote or die.”

If only you cared.

If only you were informed.

If only you wanted to participate.

If only you would just participate.

If only you would be good.

I am paraphrasing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Russell Brand has shaken people recently with his own democratic convictions:

“I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites… I don’t vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance; I know, I know my grandparents fought in two world wars (and one World Cup) so that I’d have the right to vote. Well, they were conned. As far as I’m concerned there is nothing to vote for.”

In a political system that above all else must bend to the will of the people, can it be said that choosing whether to vote or not vote is in itself an expression of the will of the people?

And if not voting is a political choice – in the sense that choosing not to act is in itself a choice – and if more and more people (the majority?) are not voting, isn’t that, in a word, democratic?

And if it hurts to engage in a failed and alienating and bloated and increasingly hostile political system, what does “getting out the vote” amount to, really, and for whom?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This is what a guy at work said about Rob Ford, the day on November 18th, 2013, when Toronto’s city council stripped Mayor Rob Ford of (most) his powers.

“Yo, say what you want about Ford. But those other politicians sounded so high and mighty when they were talking about him. They were talking down to him! At least he doesn’t sound like that when he’s talking back. He sounds normal.”

Rob Ford: the man of the people. He drops the “g” in words like “fighting”, “working”, “looking” (as in “out for the little guy”).

He refers to voters both as “the taxpayer” and “the little guy”.

In her thinking of her hometown – Youngstown, Ohio – Eileen Kane writes of another “champion of the little man” (2010: 232), James Traficant, Youngstown sheriff from 1980 – 1984 who gained local admiration for refusing to serve the eviction notices that followed the closing of the Youngstown’s mills, which put thousands of residents out of work and left them unable to pay their mortgages.

In 1983, Traficant was charged (and acquitted) of taking Mafia bribes, after confessing to taking Mafia bribes. In 1984, Traficant (a Democrat) was elected into the House of Representatives, and managed to keep this seat through eight subsequent elections in which he won an overwhelming majority (almost 70%) of the vote.

Traficant was loud, abrasive, angry, openly mocked for his cheap suits and dreadful toupee; his behavior was so abhorrent and bizarre that “[h]is own local Democratic chairman once tries (and fails) to have him declared legally insane” (Kane 2010: 232).

“Mr. Speaker, a new report says only 7 percent of scientists believe in God. That is right. And the reason they gave was that the scientists are `super smart.’ Unbelievable. Most of these absent-minded professors cannot find the toilet. Mr. Speaker, I have one question for these wise guys to constipate over: How can some thing come from no thing? And while they digest that, Mr. Speaker, let us tell it like it is. Put these super-cerebral master debaters in some foxhole with bombs bursting all around them, and I guarantee they will not be praying to Frankenstein. Beam me up here. My colleagues, all the education in the world is worthless without God and a little bit of common sense. And I yield back whatever we have left.”

Traficant served another nine terms in the House before being “convicted in 2002 of racketeering, taking bribes from the Mafia, obstruction of justice, tax evasion, and such assorted mischief as using on-the-clock public employees as farm hands on his horse ranch” (Kane 2010: 232 – 233).

Everything, it seems, but smoking crack.

Rob Ford has been accused of using on-the-clock public employees to help him coach football and to get his liquor and dry-cleaning.

He has confessed to smoking crack.

But Rob Ford also de-railed Toronto’s so-called “gravy train”, the excessive and indulgent spending many residents saw plaguing City Hall. He purged Toronto of the hated vehicle registration tax, and promised absolutely not to raise taxes…or at the absolute most and only as an absolute last resort, to raise taxes by very, very, very little. He pays for his own trips, even though they are for city business. He personally returns phone calls (from supporters) and, along with his entourage, visits constituents in their own homes and neighborhoods. He appears to have brought (though not “built” as he has claimed on American TV) subways, finally, to the suburbs.

As for Traficant, he supported increasing the minimum wage at a time when everyone was losing or had lost their jobs. He voted against illegal immigration and free trade and – most important of all for Youngstown – he held an open distain for the feds and large corporations, the very institutions that many Youngstown residents believed had abandoned them.

According to Kane, the people who supported Traficant “believed one thing: Traficant was on their side. And the forces they hate were out to get him” (Kane 2010: 233).

Hard to ask for much more that that.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Be honest. Rob Ford cannot claim to be an original, and neither can James Traficant. The name Marion Barry comes to mind.

The name George W. Bush comes to mind.

So that when figures like James Traficant or Marion Barry or Rob Ford come into power, this has not all that much to do with them as persons.

Should it come as any surprise that “the people”, who been a means to the ends of someone else’s career, someone else’s ambitions, someone else’s benefit, someone else’s goddamn photo op, have decided (perhaps finally) that it should be the other way around?

It is really so incredible that the people who voted overwhelmingly to send Rob Ford into office are, as a recent article in The Atlantic points out, the non-white, educated, working poor? The very people who tend to get hurt a lot in all areas concerning “democracy”. The very people who, vote or not vote, have not that much to gain.

Or lose.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Put another way:

It helps that Rob Ford comes off as a regular guy who is his words, is “not perfect”, who is “only human”. But it is not necessary.

It helps that people want to believe him when he says “I’m the best mayor Toronto’s has ever had,” or even “I’m the best father around,” but it is not necessary.

It helps that he promises not to lie, but it is not necessary.

It would be nice if he didn’t bully people or be an asshole, but it is not necessary.

He hurts himself, and others sometimes, but he is on side.

When somebody hurts you, you hurt them back. You use whatever’s available.

It’s not perfect.

It’s only human.

It’s democracy in action.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A recent poll finds that approximately 42% of Torontonians surveyed still support Rob Ford as mayor.

Of those surveyed, about 60% believe that Rob Ford should resign as mayor of Toronto.

The Great City of Toronto.

What are we to make of that?

References

Foster, David Wallace. (2006). “Up, Simba,” in Consider the Lobster and Other Essays. Little, Brown and Company: New York.

Since 2005, she’s been, apparently, working on a farm or something. With cows!

COWS!

YES.

[1] Thanks, too, to my friend and ally, Todd, and his obsession with the question (“Rene Russo, where is she??), which stoked my obsession, which I’m fairly certain, got the universe to get off its fat cosmic ass to provide us with an answer already. Also: the Internet.